Out of the Woods
by SpellCleaver
Summary: The woods are the domain of the wolves. I am a wolf, the mirror said. And maybe I never left home. Oneshot in the style of Margaret Atwood's 'Cat's Eye'.


**I finished reading the novel _Cat's Eye_ by Margaret Atwood today, and that book had the most beautiful writing style I've ever read. It was a wonderful book, and this is my attempt to try and write in a similar style to it, because honestly my internal monologue has been like this for weeks now since I started reading it, and I needed to get it out of my system before it started blending with my normal writing and creating some sort of weird hybrid style.**

 **Warning: this contains depressing thoughts, mentions of cancer, character death, and what I think is a graphic death. I cannot honestly say I know where the line between graphic and non-graphic deaths are, but if anything I've written is graphic, then this is it, so be warned.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Feyre, or the A Court of Thorns and Roses series. It belongs to Sarah J. Maas.**

* * *

I imagine I can hear the wind howling, but the practical part of me knows it's not true; the wind hasn't howled in hours, not since the snowstorm stopped, and I'm only wishing it would keep blowing because I don't like the woods' silence. It's not even a practical measure, the reason I don't like it: it's not that every sound I make seems amplified tenfold, or that the quiet insinuates there are few creatures nearby to hunt.

Not at all.

I hate the silence because it itches. It crawls along my neck, drips between my shoulder blades like melted snow, brushes against my calves and thighs until I have wiry fibres ensnaring me in their grasp, ready to tie my legs together and throw me in the back of a wagon like a sack. Like chattel.

The silence is fragile, but despite my hatred I feel uncomfortable breaking it. The crunch of footsteps in the snow jars my spine, and I set my teeth against the shivers it invokes. It's like the ripping of paper, the systematic _crunch, crunch, crunch_ as I plod onwards, the tearing up of a debtor's contract, the snap of a bone, the roar of vomit on the paving stones of a hearth.

I can't feel my fingers, so I wrap them in cloth. It's poor quality - the only kind we, _I_ , can afford - and rough against my palms. But my palms are rough, too, and I like the sensation of roughness on roughness; I am a half-wild beast, it's true, but I am a self-sufficient one, with the necessary armour to survive winters like this.

I flinch as a snowflakes hits my face. It melts, runs beneath my collar, a cold thread I desperately want to pull out, even though I know it's liquid, intangible, unreal. I can no easier grasp this tormentor than I can grasp the hopes and dreams I choke on each night.

I run a hand along the trunk of a narrow tree I trudge past - it's smooth. I frown behind my insubstantial scarf. Smooth means no bark, means the deer have moved on, means no food. I swallow harshly, and hope my snares have caught something edible.

My hope is a candle: small, fragile, insignificant against the night. But it burns all the same.

In a moment of weakness, I sigh, and lean my forehead against the bark-less tree, feeling the energy drain out of me. My body collapses inwards for a moment. To my horror a sob forces its way out of my throat.

I scramble to push myself off the tree, wipe my face - it's feeling strangely hot, why is it strangely hot, this is a _waste of water_ \- and move to trudge onwards, leaving the tree behind.

I freeze.

Before me, facing away, is a wolf. He's massive, majestic, positively regal. His fur coat is shaggy and thick, no sign of malnutrition.

What's more: he's facing away from me.

I stifle a gasp and a smile. I can hardly believe my luck. If I can shoot him down. . . We'll be fed for weeks. Months, maybe.

There's a skeletal bush between him and me; I crouch behind it, shrug off my pack to place it on the ground in front of me, and notch an arrow in my bow. I peer through the wiry branches of the bush to clear a clear shot.

My bowstring creaks as it's drawn back.

The wolf tenses and I tense with him. _Don't look around_ , I beg. I am not well-hidden; I hadn't expected to need to be. I am a fool. _Don't see me, please_.

The wolf looks around. His - no, _her_ , I realise - eyes fix on me.

For some reason locked away in an obscure corner of my brain, I expect her eyes to be gold. But they're not. They're blue, cold blue, blue-grey, merciless. They're the colour of a wintry sky. They're the colour of Nesta's eyes when she wants something, and imitates our mother in an attempt to get it.

They're _my_ eyes.

My fingers tremble where they clutch the bowstring.

* * *

I left the woods behind a long time ago, but they're still with me, and not least because I now co-rule over a territory such as the Illyrian Steppes. Velaris is cold, and a particularly frosty breeze tickles my cheek. I move to pull my scarf up across my nose and mouth.

When I do, my thumbs press the pads of my fingers, and I'm momentarily disoriented by the sensation of soft, unworked skin. My palms are still as abused as they were during my time in the woods, thanks to Cassian's rigorous training regime, but I have little cause to draw a bow now. My fingertips bear no calluses.

It's. . . strange, to say the least.

* * *

One day, a seer comes to my village. I'm just as distrustful of her as everyone else - seers reputedly use magic to see the future, after all, and magic is a faerie gift. It is never wise to associate yourself with faeries, when you're south of the Wall. She is as disliked as the Children of the Blessed.

I skirt around her grasping fingers, resolutely ignoring the calls of "All I ask is a little in return for knowledge many would die for!" as I retreat.

She remains for several days. I am acutely aware of her scrutiny as I trudge in and out of the village carrying pelts and meat and money back and forth. On the third day, she calls out, "Here, girl, free knowledge of the future for the beautiful woman who works so hard."

Despite myself, despite stringent warnings, I am curious. "Alright then," I say. I know it's likely to be a con, a publicity trick - she shows me a little of my future, and I'm hooked. I want to know more, and for that I must pay. Or perhaps she hopes that the passers-by might hear my fortune and decide they want to hear theirs. Either way, I am sure it is a stunt to get more money.

I don't blame her. Money means food, and food means survival. We're all just trying to make a living in the only way we know how.

"Give me your hand," she commands. I do so, making sure to transfer all cargo of any great value into my _other_ hand before I do. She clucks at that, but soon takes my hand in hers, unfurling the fist and holding the palm exposed to the sky.

"You work hard," she murmurs, running her fingers along my calluses. "Very hard. And you are full of great despair. Loneliness," she adds. "You are incredibly lonely as well."

I glare at her, my hand shaking. "I'm not-"

I'm cut off when she makes a sudden, violent motion, turning my hand over again and clasping ours together tightly, more tightly than I'm entirely comfortable with. Her grip is vice-like - I feel the first vestiges of panic begin to stir at the expression of. . . _ecstasy._ . . on her face.

She lets go just as suddenly as she seized it. "Oh," she mutters. " _Oh_."

"What is it?" My voice comes out hard. I have no time for this ridiculous charade.

She looks at me with pity - and perhaps a little awe as well. That, more than anything else, unnerves me. "You are very sad," she whispers softly, her voice somehow warm despite the snow around us. "And I wish I could say you will see happiness soon. Alas, it is not so." She pauses, likely for dramatic effect, then proclaims, "You may stumble upon some flimsy pretender of joy in the near future, but I tell you this: you will die before you know true happiness."

I take a step back like I was jerked by an invisible chain. "Tell me something I don't know," I snap, and storm off.

* * *

I am at the Hewn City on an unexpected visit when Keir invites me, somewhat mockingly, to stay for a state dinner in my honour. I raise an imperious eyebrow but oblige, resolving to use magic to check for poison in the food whilst eating. However, the food is fairly rudimentary, and I know that it's difficult to hide the tastes of effective poisons in such bland cuisine.

It's evident Keir knows this as well, since he makes a point of calling out the head chef of the Court of Nightmares to complain about the primitive meal. She is all apologies, but not to Keir; it's clear she has little to no respect for him. I assume that she is safe in her position due to her skills in cooking, or other, more unsavoury reasons. Instead, she is apologetic to _me_ , whom she seems to harbour some kernel of respect for.

"Apologies, my lady," she intones politely, not without feeling. Her bashful smile is one of the most genuine I've seen. "Your arrival was unexpected," she says, not in an attempt to excuse it, but to explain. I would have accepted excuses anyway, though a working-class woman in the Hewn City can't be expected to know that. "I'm sorry we didn't have the time to prepare a meal more suited to your tastes."

I wave away her apologies. "It is nothing," I say kindly, returning her smile. Hers blossoms even brighter. "It reminds me of home, somewhat."

It isn't a lie. It does remind me of home.

The meat is ash in my mouth, and I remember freezing nights fighting for bed space with Nesta and Elain, quick, charred meals cooked over the fireplace, wolfed down sticks of deer and wolf and rabbit gone so fast I'm left licking my fingers to save any scraps of them.

It reminds me of bellies never full, of splinters permanently embedded in my palms, of arguments about chopped firewood and new boots. It reminds me of a bone-deep _loneliness_ , the echoes of which I can still feel the ache of today.

It reminds me of hopelessness, until I want to stop holding my regal façade and sob into Rhys's shirt, because I bottled it up for so long, and now the bottle has broken and everything has come spilling out.

But none of this is the chef's fault.

So I smile instead.

* * *

It happens in the Spring Court as well. Most of my nightmares are of cold night under a mountain, of terror and blood and anguish, but there are a handful, few and far between, which stretch back to the loneliness of those days in the snow, skin red and raw, fingers unfeeling.

Not many, because I am feeling an entirely new type of loneliness nowadays, with Tamlin's distance and Lucien's reluctance and Alis's quiet sighs, but they are real, and they are potent.

Perhaps the worst thing about them is that I don't wake screaming and retching, but slowly, like I'm surfacing from a well of loneliness and self-loathing. I wake, and think the hairs plastered to my face are tree branches, the floppy green blades of grass rigid with frost, the stone walls of the manor wooden and flimsy against the winter cold.

But I am in the Spring Court. It is never winter here.

Maybe that's the problem. So long as I am in the Spring Court, there is no way for me to confront my old demons, the wind and the wilds. So long as I am here, I do nothing but run and hide from my past fears. Past tormentors. I live in a temporary state of safety forever.

But then again, below the Wall, spring was always meant to be temporary anyway.

* * *

The Night Court is better at this, with its snow and cold, crisp air and _seasons_ , but it is still not ideal. I revisit too often the forest in my mind, and my eternal terror - the one the Ouroborous mirror showed me, the one I will never let Rhys catch a glimpse of - is that one day I won't be able to get out. I'll wander lost among the naked trees and untouched snow forever.

I realise the truth of this one day, after a meeting of the High Ladies and Lords. It's in the Summer Court, where all my inhibitions can melt away for a couple of days, and I am relieved when Rhys takes my hand so we can winnow back to Velaris.

"Let's go home," he says. I nod my affirmative.

But as we clasp our fingers together, I realise the truth of a statement I once spat at him out of terror and bitterness and despair: _Velaris isn't my home_. It is my sanctuary, the seat of my love and warmth and friendships. It is my abode.

But it is not my home.

My home is those woods, the frigid, harsh, lethal woods, who chewed me up and spat me out and forged me into the woman - _woman_ , not Fae female - I am today. They embraced me like a daughter when my own father would not, and they gave me food, water, wood for the fire. They taught me how to survive.

The woods are the domain of the wolves. I am a wolf, the mirror said. And maybe I never left home.

* * *

I am dying, Madja says, worry creasing her brow into a lacework of criss-crossing patterns. I have a collection of flesh - a _tumour_ \- in my chest. It's stagnant, like a second, unbeating heart, and it is interfering with the movement of the first one.

I will not live for much longer, she says.

Rhys clutches my hand tonight, brushes my hair back from my forehead, whispers how he doesn't want to lose me. I don't want to go, either, I whisper back to him, and I mean it.

But a part of me thinks it's fitting, that it should be my heart - _my_ heart - that dies first. I am the huntress with an artist's soul - the High Lady with a human heart. It's fitting that I, who by all laws of biology should have died hundreds of years ago, will be the first to go.

I wake one night, that muscle in my chest convulsing agonisingly, and I shake Rhys awake. I do not want him to have to wake up next to my dead body in the morning.

He holds me as I sob, and even as I sag in his arms. I feel it, when it stops beating, and I can feel the cells dying off one by one as they don't get the vital oxygen they need to exist. I drift into half-waking state; I'm vaguely aware of Rhys shouting, his hands on my face, my name being murmured over and over again like a mantra.

Like a prayer.

"Don't leave me," he begs.

But I'm leaving him, and there's nothing either of us can do to stop it.

* * *

I traipse through the woods in a flurry of snow. That's when I see the wolf again.

I don't consciously know why I immediately add "again" to that sentence, but I'm certain, somehow, that we have met before. Her grey coat is shaggy, her blue eyes fierce, and I feel like I am looking at my own reflection. We look at each other, and see all the ugly and beautiful parts of ourselves staring back.

I am the wolf; the wolf is me.

We stand, gazing at each other, as the snow swirls on around us. The bare branches reach for the sky, like children fallen down a hole, desperately scrabbling for some purchase with which to climb back up. Their trunks are bare; the wind is cold. Winter is here.

I am home.


End file.
